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Awkward Embraces: Emerging andEstablished Powers and the ShiftingFortunes of Africa's InternationalRelations in the Twenty-First CenturyScarlett CornelissenPublished online: 10 Nov 2009.

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Awkward Embraces: Emerging andEstablished Powers and the ShiftingFortunes of Africa’s InternationalRelations in the Twenty-First CenturySCARLETT CORNELISSEN�

ABSTRACT This article examines the contours of Africa’s international relationsin the twenty-first century. Specifically, it explores the way in which the rise ofemerging powers has affected the continent’s international position, and theimpulses which have arisen through emerging powers’ closer engagement with thecontinent. It is contended that rather than having eclipsed the role traditionallyplayed by the powers of the North on the continent, the presence of emergingpowers—and particularly the leadership they provide in new Southern-basedmultilateral fora—moulds Africa’s interaction with the North. At the same time theprominence of emerging powers requires new ways of understanding internationalhierarchy, hegemony and power. Three predominant trends and their implicationsin contemporary African international relations are discussed: the North’s greaterinterest in the African continent and its involvement in the establishment of majoraid and development programmes; deepening multilateralism in the South, with theenhanced creation in recent years of major Southern alliances led by emergingpowers; and the more extensive securitisation of international politics stemmingfrom, inter alia, the so-called Global War on Terror.

Introduction

Two of the more enduring legacies of the end of the Cold War have been a signifi-cant rebalancing of first, the relative influence of economics over politics in deter-mining the trends and tenor of international relations, and second, the entities—state, but more so, non-state—which increasingly are leaving their imprints onthe global political landscape. The rapid economic ascendance of some states—and their multinational firms—from the South, and the growing influence theyappear to have in the international system has prompted a justifiable interestamong scholars/analysts about their implications for the international economy

Politikon, (April 2009), 36(1), 5–26

ISSN 0258-9346 print; 1470-1014 online/09/010005–22 # 2009 South African Association of Political Studies

DOI: 10.1080/02589340903155377

Politikon, (April 2009), 36(1), 5–26

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and politics alike (see for instance Hurrell, 2006; Soares De Lima and Hirst, 2006;Shaw, Cooper and Antkiewicz, 2007; Burgess, 2008). Most characterisations ofthe so-termed emerging powers include at least one (South Africa) or sometimesa few African states (Egypt, Tunisia, Nigeria) (e.g. Alden and Vieira, 2005;Marber, 2006; Martin, 2008), as part of portrayed international axes and/oralliances of emerging powers, and propositions are generally proffered of thesignificance of the new, presumed force of emerging powers for both theidentified African power and its regional neighbours.

Yet with the exception of a few contributions (e.g. Shaw et al., 2007) most ofthese delineations lack a certain grounding of the influence of emerging powers inAfrica’s overall international relations. This would include some serious consider-ation being given to the questions of how emerging powers affect the constitutiveelements of the international system, i.e. (relative) power, political authority,hierarchy and hegemony; how Africa’s international position and relations areaffected by such evolving configurations; and how some of the foundationalaspects which underpin the continent’s international relations and which relatein the main to the nature of the state in Africa, play both a role in but are alsoimpacted upon by the contemporary era’s shifting balance of forces.

This article examines the contours of Africa’s international relations in thetwenty-first century set against the rise of a number of large and influential devel-oping countries. It explores the predominant patterns of interaction betweenascendant powers of the South and the established powers of the North and theimpact these have had on African international relations. Three main trends arediscussed. The first is the closer leanings exhibited toward the continent by North-ern powers since the start of the new millennium. Closer Northern engagementwith Africa has generally manifested in the launch of a number of large-scaleinternational aid and development campaigns. The second is the way in whichAfrica has been affected by processes related to the deepened multilateralism ofthe South and the parallel establishment of a greater number of North–South dia-logue fora. Led in the main by the emerging powers from the developing world,Southern-based multilateral constellations have been created at a more intensivepace over the past decade or so. They proffer to some extent an alternativeagenda aimed at the reduction of international disparities. Yet while significant,the nascent pattern of two-track multilateralism (i.e. South–South versusNorth–South) presents challenges to how emerging powers can adequately rep-resent the South. This has implications for the African continent and how itstands to gain from Southern-driven multilateral alliances.

The third trend is related to the way in which Africa has been affected by theemergent international agenda around peace and security. This concernschanges in the discursive framework by which security has become more patentlylinked to questions of development, but more sombrely, also the way in which thesecuritisation of international politics, led by the foreign policy objectives of theUnited States of America in the wake of 9/11, has had implications for Africaninternational relations. In all, the ascent of key developing states and their influ-ence in Africa has not eclipsed the role traditionally played by the North.

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Contemporary African international relations are shaped by the changingdynamics between emerging and dominant powers, with both positive and nega-tive consequences for the continent.

Contextualising African international relations in the twentieth century

It should be said from the outset that any brushstroke depiction which aims at asingular account of African international relations would be misleading. Thereare many endogenous features of commonality across the African continent.These include similarities in aspects such as socio-cultural composition, politicaltraits or experiences of imperialism. When viewed in its totality however, thecontinent refracts into distinct parts where different trajectories of economicand political development, as well as the separate legacies left by different colo-nial masters have sometimes led to stark regional contrasts. Such differentiationamong regions has often been the foundation for very divergent pursuits andorientations to international politics. Indeed, the institutionalisation of Africa’sinternational relations through regional blocs or allegiances has been a persistentand overarching—if not always explicit—feature of the continent’s external links.In addition, the nature, depth and purpose of the international politics whichAfrican states have pursued have also varied extensively over the years. Differenthistorical epochs therefore mark African international relations.

As a general tendency however, Africa’s international relations evolved contin-gent to the way in which key internal processes—mainly related to complex andprotracted processes around state consolidation—intertwined with conditions andwider developments in the international arena. Indeed state formation, always anintractable and variable process elsewhere in the world, had particular effect forAfrica’s placing in the international system. This derived for one, from the wayin which the shaping of the African state and the associated internal battles fordominance over economic and other resources was closely affected by the chan-ging nature of the international economy (for reviews see Clapham, 1996, 1998;Young, 2004). Continued neo-colonial relations and the shifting politicaleconomies—and fortunes—of former imperial powers were important variablesin this regard, if only for the direct and indirect ways in which these influencedthe size of the political spoils for some incumbent African leaders. The closelink between questions of African state formation and the continent’s externalaffairs also relates to the manner in which the predominant tone of post-independence politics on the continent has posed some major challenges to anumber of the treasured principles of the international system. For example, themaintenance of territorial integrity was one of the main doctrines for collectivepolitics on the continent, codified in the founding Charter of the Organisation ofAfrican Unity. It has generally however also been a doctrine which has provenmost difficult to uphold in the face of continual rivalries over territory and bound-aries and the internecine warfare which often erupted from this. More broadly, theconfrontation between pre-colonial and postcolonial political organisation on

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the continent has tended to spill over in uncomfortable fashion and to be a persist-ent influence in the continent’s external relations.

There have been significant changes over the years in the nature of Africanengagement with the outside world, which is delineable into several distinctperiods. These are: the early period of post-independence (1960s to early1970s); the era of consolidation (the remainder of the 1970s); the onset of and dee-pening of internal crises and of external dependence (end of the 1970s and the bulkof the 1980s); the false promise of democratisation in the wake of 1989s monu-mental international changes, a period followed by deepened, if more veiledAfro-pessimism and of greater economic marginalisation (the remainder of thetwentieth century); and a period of ostensibly fresh international orientationtowards and interest in Africa in the twentieth century. This new period has agreat deal to do with the way in which the economic, but increasingly politicalsignificance of states from the developing world affects politics in the inter-national system. Their closer dealings with African states have become an impor-tant influence in reshaping Africa’s international relations in the early twenty-firstcentury (Martin, 2008).

The period immediately following the end of colonialism was an era in whichAfrican international relations reflected the optimism that reigned throughoutmuch of the continent, centred on the promises that lay in newly acquired statusesof sovereignty. Strong proclamations of a sense of self, as independent nations,mingled with the nascent international ideology of Third World solidarity of thetime but were also shaped by the Cold War posturing of the major powers.Toward the latter part of the 1960s Africa was caught up in the ideologicalskirmishes between the West and the Soviet Union. In the short term individualAfrican states seemed to gain from their alignment with one or the other camp,but by the beginning of the 1970s, the greater part of the continent appeared tohave moved into a position of relative obscurity for the shapers of internationalpolitics. The availability of specific resources—and the willingness to offsetthem to the highest bidders, generally former imperial powers, but in the faceof a changing international political economy, not necessarily so—and the possi-bility to provide proxy arenas for major power conflict, seemed to be the mostimportant factors determining continued relevance for certain African states.The bulk of the continent appeared to sink into general obsolescence.

This trend seemed to be strengthened by the events of international crises of the1970s, so that by the end of that decade, while the continent’s domestic politicsbecame increasingly settled around incumbents who, having turned out victorsin hard-fought internal battles for power, had established themselves as long-term leaders, Africa’s external position became progressively enfeebled throughweakened international economic and political leverage. The 1980s saw thecontinuation of these patterns. But the decade, marked by the consolidation ofthe influence of international financial institutions (IFIs) also brought forAfrican states the additional burdens of deepening internal crises, structuraladjustment and growing external dependence. The decade culminated in the con-tradictory impulses of increased international aloofness toward the continent

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(unofficially voiced as Afro-pessimism) and the new expectation to change set offby the turn of tide in international politics following the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Indeed, the events of 1989 did spark a wave of democratisation and internaladjustment across the African continent. Some observers described this as ‘asecond independence’ for Africa (Joseph, 1997). Although overly dramatic andbelied by the political and institutional reversal of democratic gains whichmany African political systems saw in subsequent years, such statements doconvey the extent to which the beginning of the 1990s was meant to mark anew era for African development. The expectations in the North of what thiswould mean for Africa’s position in the international system were certainlyvery high. This is perhaps best exemplified by the speech delivered by French Pre-sident Francois Mitterand at a summit meeting with West African leaders in theFrench town of La Baulle in June 1990, where he encouraged them to participatein the swell of political change which at that time was in full swing across East andCentral Europe. He was very specific about what a ‘democratic opening’ entailed,consisting in his view of: ‘systeme representatif, elections libres, multipartisme,liberte de la presse, independance de la magistrature; refus de la censure’ (Mitter-and, 1990). More importantly, he related to the African states in attendance thatshould they undertake those steps to democracy, they would receive priorityassistance from France.

Thus uttered, the relations between African states and the North became veryclearly circumscribed in terms of the degree to which increasingly specific pro-visions around democratisation and internal reform were adhered to by Africangovernments. By the mid-1990s African international relations with the Northwere heavily determined by the politics of conditionality which were being chan-nelled through the IFIs. While economic and political conditionality—in the main,partially kept —was the mark of Africa’s engagement with IFIs and some North-ern governments in the time of ‘structural adjustment packages’ during the 1980s,it was the extent to which during the last part of the twentieth century the discourseof ‘good governance’ became dominant and overruled African interaction with theNorth that sets this period apart as a distinctive era in Africa’s internationalrelations. Indeed, increased economic marginalisation rather than inclusion wasthe hallmark of the continent’s relations with the North during the last 15 yearsof the twentieth century. Although hyperbolic, the hapless depiction by TheEconomist in its 13 May 2000 leader of Africa as ‘the hopeless continent’conveys a sense of the overwhelmingly negative fashion in which Africa hadcome to be regarded at that point in mainstream international discourse.

It is into this mix that factors such as the rise of states such as India, the Peoples’Republic of China and to a lesser extent Brazil, and the increased positioning bysuch states as leaders of the South constitute new impulses which affect Africa’splace in the international system. This is evident in aspects such as the fostering ofnew trade ties, the creation of new economic and political alliances which seek toprovide greater representation to states of the South, and importantly, in thereframing of the discursive framework in which engagement between the Northand the developing world occurs.

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Before exploring the manner in which, inter alia, the stronger presence of emer-ging powers in the economies and politics of African states has stimulated freshdirections in the continent’s international relations in the twenty-first century,the article briefly focuses on the context within which the significance of emergingpowers—in altering the texture of the international system—should be read.

Altered balance of forces: emerging powers and their testto world hegemony

At the mid-point to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), although progress has beenmade, significant challenges remain. We renew our commitment to these goals by reinvigor-ating our efforts, and by strengthening our partnerships with, as well as encouraging theefforts of, the developing countries based on mutual accountability . . . We also reiteratethat our focus on development cooperation should be on the promotion of good governanceand self-sustained, private sector-led economic growth in developing countries. (Group ofEight, 2008)

The conditions under which the Group of Eight Summit was held in Hokkaido,Japan in 2008 in some ways bore remarkable resemblance to the founding gatheringof the grouping, then comprised of six states (France, the United States, the UnitedKingdom, West Germany and Japan and Italy) more than 30 years earlier. At thattime, alarmed at the major unsettlement caused by what was the first in a numberof international energy crises during the 1970s, the world’s major economiesconvened to caucus on the effects of the crisis and possible means of policy coordi-nation and international regulation. A comparable sense of crisis—now, due toglobalisation, regarded to be of greater magnitude and deeper implications—pervaded the 2008 Summit, as the rapid and very intense rise in the price ofcrude oil to unprecedented levels seemed to be the cause of escalating foodprices worldwide and led to sporadic but well organised mass demonstrations. Aconcomitant credit and mortgage crisis affecting particularly the economies of theUSA and the UK added to a growing impression that a crisis of global dimensionhad descended, and that the need for coordinated measures (or in today’s jargon,appropriate means of global governance) was pressing.

Perhaps this came from the lessons of the energy crises of the 1970s, whichdetermined the fortunes and economic destinies of a great number of states in thedeveloping world, set in motion trajectories of decline (assisted in the case ofmany states in Africa, for example, by unfortunate policy choices and means ofgoverning), and laid the conditions for balefully uneven relations between theindustrialised North and the developing world. The 1970s energy crises reflectedthe major geo-political currents underpinning international relations at the time,and came to define the international political economy in a momentous way.

While occupied by some of the same concerns as the founding Summit of 1975,the G8 Summit of 2008 differed in two important ways, both of which demonstratethe depth of change which the international system has undergone over the pastnumber of decades. The first relates to the more expansive agenda of the 2008Summit, which incorporating discussions around climate change and the global

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environment, peace-building, and a review of progress with the MillenniumDevelopment Goals particularly in relation to the African continent, clearlyreflected the stronger global governance orientation which has become the markof international politics in recent years.

The second is related to this, and is associated with the fact that the G8 nowincluded participants beyond the crucible of the Cold War which defined thegrouping’s membership and objectives at its foundation. This is of course mostpatently illustrated in the decade-long membership of the Russian Federation,but also, crucially, in the attendance of several states from the South. A numberof those states had been more or less regular invitees to G8 summits over theyears—in particular South Africa, which as discussed below, had attained somestrategic significance through its role in the conceptualisation and internationalpromotion of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD)—buttheir presence had become notionally formalised and regularised since 2007. Inthis year the G8 introduced what was termed ‘equal and enduring partnerships’with five developing states: China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa.They have named themselves the G5. In the lexicon of the G8 they are knownas ‘outreach partners’.

For a variety of reasons discussed below the 2008 Summit was a less than happyengagement for either the G8 or the G5. What is significant however is that theexpansion of both the agenda and membership of the G8 represents a fundamentalaltering of one of the most important constituents of the international political archi-tecture painstakingly fashioned following the end of the Second World War. Thishas not been an easy process for the G8, given the greater pressure of scrutiny towhich the body has become subject. This is part of the growing internationalcivic mobilisation and the demand for the democratisation of international relationsas they are played out through international fora (see for instance Edwards andGaventa, 2001; Colas, 2002). It is associated with a rising tide of popular organis-ation fomented by what has become known as the anti-globalisation movement, butis also indicative of the extent to which the demand for greater international equityhas become a greater force in international politics.

In one sense this may be deemed the return of conflicting ideology in inter-national relations, after an (admittedly brief) period of apparent consensus andideological harmonisation after the end of the Cold War, consolidated around aseeming collective orientation towards the politics of neo-liberal economics.Specific factors have fed into this, most central of which have probably beenthe effects of the USA’s so-termed Global War on Terror in the wake of 9/11and the growing polarisation of international politics which had accompaniedthis over the years into camps of vocal opponents and willing and less-than-willing alliance partners. As discussed more extensively below this has certainlycreated the conditions by which the questioning of hegemony has become an issueof division between states of the North and those of the South (see for instanceAbrahamsen, 2005).

It is in this context that the ascent of the world’s emerging powers has to be readboth as a shift in the balance of economic forces in the wider international

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system—a process which is underpinned by several interrelated factors—and as apolitical process, marked by a reorientation toward the nature and purpose ofpower, which is affecting exchanges in the international system in some signifi-cant ways.

Emerging powers have been varyingly conceptualised (e.g. Kaplinsky, 2006;Hurrell, 2006; O’Neal, 2007; Pattnayak, 2007), and since the internal and externalcharacteristics of emerging power are dealt with at greater length elsewhere in thisspecial issue, those will not be rehearsed here. As a preface to the discussion belowabout the repercussions which emerging powers have had in reshaping the inter-national environment for African states, it is nonetheless useful to outline themajor attributions—and distinctions—that are made with regard to emergingpowers. The first is that size—specifically of the national economy—is generallyused as a shorthand identifier. In general, the economic expansion of emergingpowers has not only been rapid and continuous, but has tended to outstrip the per-formance of those major industrialised states which have given shape to the worldeconomy in the twentieth century (e.g. Antkiewicz & Whalley, 2006). Size is alsoimportant in the case of states such as China and India where sheer demographicweight has enabled the development of economies of scale which have beendifficult to replicate in other parts of the world.

The second general attribute of emerging powers is therefore the relative influ-ence they exercise over contemporary trajectories of the world economy. Thismanifests in one manner in the favourable economic balance sheets, terms oftrade and even credit surpluses which many emerging powers have garnered inrecent years, but is also reflected in the increased formation of economic blocswhich emerging powers have been party to—often as participants of allianceswhich straddle the northern and southern hemispheres, but more generally asleaders of budding Southern-based blocs.

The third attribute relates to the political counter-aspect of this, as newly forgeddiplomatic alliances among emerging powers and smaller powers from the Southreflect a deepened multilateralism of world politics, which, different from the poli-tics of Southern solidarity of the Cold War era, are either more patently built oneconomic and trade compatibilities, or have as their objective the engenderingof closer economic partnerships. Alliances such as the India–Brazil–SouthAfrica Dialogue Forum (IBSA) are of this ilk, as are larger and perhaps moread hoc forms of multilateralism such as the dialogue partners of the G20þ (thegrouping within the World Trade Organisation that represents developingcountries). What is important about such constellations is that they provideSouthern states which, because they have smaller and more volatile economiesand as such do not have immediate claim to emerging power status, with theopportunity to behave as one—at least in a diplomatic sense. As one of the smal-lest economies in the catalogues commonly drawn up to identify emerging powers(see for example Shaw et al., 2007, pp. 1260–1263), and one whose economy hasin recent years been heavily affected by deep-lying structural problems, SouthAfrica for example certainly seems to gain its emerging power title from politicaland diplomatic stature rather than the force of its international economic influence.

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Geography constitutes the fourth major means of distinguishing emergingpowers. In most analyses it has become a convenient—if faulty—shorthand toregard emerging powers within posited North–South axes of division (Martin,2008). As a general feature emerging powers are not part of the sphere of NorthAtlantic industrial capitalism which gave predominant form to the worldeconomy in the twentieth century. Indeed, the very notion of emerging powersattempts to compensate for the inadequacy of analytical descriptors which delin-eate world capitalism into camps of industrialised, industrialising and other. Butrather than an actual fact of geography, the identity which most emergingpowers don as being part of the South and all which that entails in the circumscrip-tion of North–South interaction, is a political identity upon which, as discussed,often essential partnerships of solidarity are built. A more precise geographicaldemarcation would relate to an eastern axis of emerging powers, stemmingfrom the economic centres of gravity constituted by the magnitude of theChinese and Indian economies, and supported by the stable patterns of growth evi-denced by countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey. Although certainLatin American states such as Brazil, Mexico and to a lesser extent Argentinaand Venezuela have left notable impressions as aspirant powers, this easternaxis may be said to overshadow the western axis, certainly in terms of demographyand economics. Moreover, in more recent years, in the aftermath of the Bushregime’s Global War on Terror, the Islamic states of the east have gainedadditional significance in their alignment with one or the other ideological camp.

Indeed, in the context of today’s international system ideology itself may besaid to be a further, but generally neglected factor of separation/distinctionbetween emerging powers and other states. Ideology operates or is deployed insome significant ways not only in the structuring of international relations butin the construction of the discourses around emerging powers themselves. The ten-dency of a significant number of Northern governments and increasingly, too,international financial institutions, to frame emerging powers in opposition tothe numerous weak or failed states of the South is a case in point (e.g. Jones,2008). In this emerging powers are attributed with factors of endogenous cohesionand capacity which are regarded as lacking in the purported fragile states of thedeveloping world. Contrasts are also drawn between the aptitude of emergingpowers to create the conditions for economic fortitude, and the generally highlevels of external dependence of fragile countries. The consolidation of statestrength is therefore used as the central discriminating variable between emergingpowers and their weaker counterparts in the South. The prevailing discourse onfragile/failed states has been critiqued for a misreading of the historical pro-cesses—specifically imperial expansion—by which state formation in the devel-oping world took place, the relations of disparity between the North and Southupon which this process was based, and the extent to which these factors continueto influence the nature and fortunes of the states of the South (e.g.; Mbembe, 2001;Grovogui, 2002; Jones, 2008). The discourse has also been criticised for represent-ing a more sinister turn toward the securitisation of international relations over thepast half-decade and for being appropriated by the administration of the USA (and

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to a lesser extent the United Kingdom) in its international anti-terror campaigns(Abrahamsen, 2005). Whatever the shortcomings and misuse of the discourse,however, it is an important indicator of the ideological underpinnings to—andimplications of—the rank-order status of emerging powers in the contemporaryinternational arena.

Following from the above the final significant aspect of emerging powers is thedegree to which their ascendance challenges the very constitutive character of theinternational system as well as the extent to which their evolution carriesimplications for the framing—and meaning—of power in this system. Here, atten-tion must also be drawn to the way in which emerging powers’ shifting balanceof influence confronts and forces adjustment to the established patterns ofworld hegemony. In general, hegemony in the Westphalian order has beeninformed by two logics of power. The first derives from the anarchical nature ofworld order and linked to that, the fact that sovereignty (or independence) inthe inter-state system is an abstract notion which cannot be exogenously enforced.In the absence of a single state with sufficient capabilities of compulsion, sover-eignty exists as a consequence of constituent state units consenting to eachother’s autonomy. Only through the universal, if unspoken, agreement torespect the independence of other states and to follow collectively laid downrules, do relations of sovereignty operate and can the system as a whole exist. Fol-lowing Gramsci, hegemony is the collective but tacitly agreed upon mechanismwhich keeps this abstract system of sovereignty in function.

At the same time, however, and as the second logic of international power, theinter-state system, like all world systems, is hierarchically organised. Through thepossession of resources and in the contemporary era, influence within the capitalistsystem, certain states can be more prominent than others. Factors of power in thissystem include: access to and control over crucial raw materials; ‘control oversources of capital; control over markets and competitive advantages in the pro-duction of highly valued goods’ (Keohane, 1984, pp. 32–33). To this could beadded military power sufficient to constitute a deterrent to aggressive behaviourby would-be rivals. Since hegemony in the inter-state capitalist system dependsto a great degree on economic dominance, hegemons have an interest in maintain-ing stability and influencing the rules by which economic engagement on worldscale occurs, so that such rules are in their favour. The progressive opening upof the international trade environment since the end of the Second World Warand the development of a broad range of regimes of cooperation were specificprocesses in the creation of hegemonic order with the USA at the apex.

It is this established system of hierarchy and hegemony which emerging powersare today affecting. This occurs in several overlapping fashions. First, by sheerforce of economic expansion, such powers have an unsettling effect on theworld’s economic epicentre(s), as well as on fixed customs of capitalist productionand exchange. Second, since many emerging powers attribute their rise to pro-cesses and factors that do not conform strongly to the patterns of industrialisationof the traditional powers, their experiences are now often regarded as alternativemodels of development (Shaw et al., 2007). Third, in seeking international

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conditions which favour their continued expansion, these states are cohering inalliances which increasingly offer credible challenges to the institutions of tradecollaboration and governance upon which the post-war regime of liberalisa-tion—and hegemonic enforcement—was built.

Fourth, related to this, new forms of emerging power multilateralism oftenactively represent the interests of such powers to change not only the ‘rules’ butalso the very essence of the ‘game’. Finally, by steadily drawing in smallerstates from the South under their sphere of influence, emerging powers not onlyencroach upon the realms of neo-colonial influence of the North; they can alsoaffect established bonds of custodianship between developing countries andtheir former imperial powers. The diplomatic and political activities of emergingpowers, and the motives which underlie such activities, are therefore as importantas the impressions they leave on other states’ economies. In sum, emerging powershave ramifications for the ways in which central processes in world politics unfold.More broadly, the canvas of contemporary international relations is significantlyformed by the effect of such states’ ascent. For the developing world in particular,the significance of emerging powers should be measured not in the latter’s eclipseof the powers of the North, but in the political interplay between emerging andestablished powers and how this determines the broad tenor of internationalrelations. This is of particular significance for the African continent, whose pos-ition in the international system since the end of the Cold War has been consider-ably influenced by the variable ‘vocabulary of motives’ (following Burke, 1969)of both traditional and emerging powers.

Variable motives—Africa’s interaction with emerging and establishedpowers in the twenty-first century

Reversing the politics of marginality? ‘New’ Northern engagements with Africa

The measures we propose constitute a coherent package for Africa. They must be deliveredtogether . . . [This] is the year to take the decisions that will show we are serious aboutturning the vision of a strong and prosperous Africa into a reality. (Commission forAfrica, 2005, p. 4)

In the brief unfolding of the twenty-first century, a number of major trends havecome to characterise Africa’s international relations. The most significant ofthese must be the renewed focus which questions of poverty and developmenton the continent seem to enjoy, and a certain degree of attention which the con-tinent is receiving in this regard from Northern-led institutions of finance andpower. Sparked perhaps primarily through the publicity provided to the continentby some of the world’s leading ‘celebrity diplomats’ (Cooper, 2007) severalinitiatives, programmes and policies—concrete as well as rhetorical—haveflowed from this which ostensibly mark a turn from the continent’s position ofmarginal existence at the end of the twentieth century.

Not generally given to expansive displays of emotion, British Prime MinisterTony Blair’s very passionate appeal in 1999 to act so that African poverty

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would not remain as ‘the scar on the conscience of the world’, held the promise ofa new era of Northern orientation toward the African continent. So, the first decadeof the new millennium carried a series of high profile—and certainly highly pub-licised—endeavours towards Africa by some of the world’s major political figuresand institutions. This has been met by activism on the part of several continentalleaders to introduce an extensive programme of change. Subsumed under thetitle of ‘the African agenda’ this programme has become a focal point for Northernand wider Southern engagement with the continent. The South African leader,Thabo Mbeki, stands as a central continental figure in the declaration anddissemination of the African agenda. Indeed, under his stewardship South Africahas also centred its foreign policy on this agenda. Yet the track record of thisagenda, as well as the North’s financial commitments to it, have in the main notlived up to expectations.

In a wider sense, from the start of the new millennium a number of programmeswere introduced by international institutions aimed at bringing about far-reachingimprovements in the world at large. The adoption of the Millennium DevelopmentGoals by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2000, the extensionof the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative to its third phase, andthe articulation of the 2002 ‘Monterrey Consensus’ to bring back quantitativetargets for the provision of Official Development Assistance, represented widerattempts by the international community to improve the universal situationregarding world poverty. In relation to the African continent two specific pro-grammes were launched which stand out for what they sought to achieve andwhom hey were led by. On the face of it these programmes signalled serious atten-tion by the world’s most powerful on the plight of the African continent. Thesewere the G8 Africa Action Plan adopted at the Kanaskis Summit in 2002 andthe creation of the Commission for Africa in 2004.

The adoption of the G8 Africa Action Plan sealed a succession of closer engage-ments between G8 members and the African leaders who stood central in thedevelopment of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. Commencingwith the attendance at the 2000 Okinawa Summit by Thabo Mbeki, Nigeria’sOlesugun Obasanjo and Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the African leaders,mandated by the African Union to further the objectives of NEPAD, sought togain the support of the rich nations for the programme. NEPAD’s unabashedself-image as representing the ‘determination of Africans to extricate themselvesand the continent from the malaise of underdevelopment and exclusion in aglobalising world’ (NEPAD, 2001, p. 1), its messages of African ownership andpartnership, and more particularly, its self-monitoring mechanisms through thePeer Review process, found a very willing audience in G8 member states. Thefact that NEPAD ostensibly addressed what most concerned Northern leaders,i.e., the commitment to alter the systemic defects in African political systems andto strive towards ‘good governance’, went a long way in persuading the North toprovide backing to the programme. In themselves, individuals such as Mbeki andto a lesser extent, Obasanjo, seemed to represent a new generation of African leader-ship focused on guiding the continent on a new path of governance.

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Many critics have characterised NEPAD as an elite-level engagement betweena cohort of African leaders, at some distance removed from their populace, andrich nations, which seeks neo-liberal remedies for Africa’s problems of poverty(e.g. Taylor, 2005; Jordaan, 2007). Yet, cynically, these were the foundationswhich ensured G8 support for the programme. The G8 Africa Action Plan articu-lated the industrialised countries’ acceptance of NEPAD and their undertaking to‘establish enhanced partnerships with African countries whose performancereflect the NEPAD commitment’ (Group of 8, 2002). Contained in the Planwere, among others, goals for the promotion of peace and security on the continent(including largely abortive plans to finance an African stand-by force); closertrade and investment ties; more directed programmes of debt relief; and enhancedassistance for addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Three years later, at the 2005Gleneagles Summit, G8 members committed themselves to the financing of theAction Plan. The Gleneagles Summit undertook to increase African ODA toUS$25bn by 2010 (roughly a doubling of the ODA which the continent receivedin 2004), and to cancel up to 100% of the multilateral debt of African countriesmost eligible under the HIPC scheme.

These undertakings were lauded at the time as full-scale commitment by the G8to reverse the marginalisation of the African continent. Since then, however, avery small proportion of the pledged assistance was actually paid out, drawingextensive criticism from the ranks of international lobby groups, NGOs andAfrican governments themselves that the G8 processes have been nothing morethan symbolic gestures (e.g. Brookings Institute, 2008). By the 2008 Summitthe leaders of the industrialised world were left repeating their pledges, withlittle achievement having been made in terms of concrete disbursement (see forinstance the Group of Eight, 2008).

While producing much less of the financial underwriting than promised, theG8’s Africa Action Plan has sought to extend and regularise the engagementbetween Africa and the North. This was done with the creation of the Africa Part-nership Forum, following the 2003 G8 Summit in Evian, France. This foruminvolves the 20 countries on the steering committee of the African Union, themember states of the G8 and a number of the largest multilateral sponsors ofAfrican development programmes. The aim of the Forum is to institutionalisediscussion and surveillance of the policies and commitments made by Africanand Northern states. The Forum has now been given an office by the Organisationof Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which regards this as itspart in a programme of Northern tender toward Africa.

The second major publicity-laden international programme focused on Africandevelopment, the Commission for Africa, appears to have the same destiny ofbeing a highly prestigious but largely figurative process to overturn Africa’spath of decline and mismanagement. Launched in 2004 at the behest of thenUK Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Commission echoed the language ofAfrican ownership which underpinned the NEPAD, and sought to ride on thewave of newfound aspiration which the NEPAD process and its instigators osten-sibly sought to foster. The Commission report, Our Common Interest, provided

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recommendations on required levels of investments and social and educationalprogrammes in Africa, as well as internal capacity-building and improvement inpolitical transparency (Commission for Africa Report, 2005). Its most importantfeature were its recommendations on financing development, which counselledinternally and externally generated aid and development funding three times thevolume which was committed to under the G8 Africa Action Plan (i.e.US$75bn per annum over three years). Perhaps quite unrealistically the report rec-ommended that projected increases in economic revenue in Africa and higher taxlevies be used to contribute the continent’s part of its development finance. A fewyears after the founding of the Commission and the release of the report, with littleprogress made on its recommendations and some of its central leaders (such asTony Blair) in some ways ingloriously abdicating from their principal politicalpositions, the initiative appears to have lost some of its early momentum.

For all these demonstrations of Northern outreach, it is not clear what the gainshave been for the African continent. Also, beyond providing occasion for dialogueand regular contact these initiatives have delivered little on the promises made byeither side. Regular defaulting on NEPAD’s provisions, particularly as far as‘good governance’, transparency and steps toward democratisation are concerned,has weakened the programme’s standing in the eyes of the North. The politicalsituation in Zimbabwe and that country’s apparent unstoppable spiral towardeconomic decline has widely been viewed by the North as a test case forAfrica’s commitment to NEPAD. The prolonged hesitance by African leadersto take a firm stance in the deepening crisis has strengthened Northern scepticism.

Rather than being a bond contracted on equal footing, therefore, the closerengagement between the North and Africa in recent years has been based on anextension of the Northern attitude of conditionality which has characterised therelationship between the two parties for the better part of the past three decades.It is in this context that African states probably seek to strengthen ties with non-Northern (or emerging) powers where fewer questions seem to be asked. Partlybased on understandings of historical solidarity, these South–South relationshipsare also aimed at offsetting the influence of the North over African trajectories,and in all likelihood, policy-making. It may therefore be useful to read emergentmajor multilateral South–South initiatives for the way in which they presentalternative foundations for Africa’s engagement with the North.

Vibrant but competing multilateral linkages

Indeed, a second major trend in recent African international relations relates to theway in which the continent has been affected by processes of deepened multilater-alism in the new millennium. Such multilateralism has been of two types. The firstdraws from the acknowledgement by the dominant powers of the degree to whichworld economic forces have been rebalanced, of their increased interdependencewith emerging economies, and the consequent pressures to broaden arenas for keynegotiations around economic affairs. This process is reflected in the creation ofconstellations such as the Group of 20-Finance in 1999, which is composed

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of the finance ministers and central bank governors from the major industrialisedas well as developing countries. Founded in the wake of the Asian financial crisesof the late twentieth century, the G20-Finance has sought to become a forumwhich enables stronger coordination of the world’s economy through Northernand Southern engagement. In its composition the G20-Finance reflects the newequilibrium of economic power, being constituted of the G8; its five ‘outreachpartners’ (or G5); and six ‘systemically significant’ countries (Argentina, SouthKorea, Indonesia, Turkey, Australia and Saudi Arabia).

The spawning of the G5 by the G8 in itself represents an attempt by the North todraw in those countries which are deemed important shapers of the contemporaryinternational political economy so as to provide a more effective response to emer-ging governance challenges. There has been some disagreement in the G8 aboutthe extent to which the G5 should be integrated into the alliance of industrialisedpowers, as well as how representative the outreach should be. Leaders such asTony Blair suggested the inclusion of the G5 as a permanent fixture and thetransformation of the G8 into the G13, while the former Canadian prime ministeradvocated a grouping known as the Leaders 20, similar in composition to theG20-Finance and with the aim of extending the Southern membership tobeyond the five outreach partners. At the 2007 G8 Summit in Germany, theposition of the Outreach Five as regular members has become more or lessfixed through the adoption of the Heiligendamm Process. This involves dialogueand cooperation between the G8 and G5 on four areas: encouraging innovation butensuring the safeguarding of intellectual property rights; fostering investmentthrough more open and transparent investment environments; allocating responsi-bilities for development, with a particular focus on the African continent; andcooperation and the sharing of knowledge on improved use of energy and thereduction of carbon dioxide emissions.

The full inclusion of the G5 countries into the G8 has certainly solidified theirstatus as emerging powers and represents one of the stronger declarations ofNorth–South cooperation in recent years. This type of multilateralism has beenoffset by the second predominant type of the contemporary era, which has beenmore centrally focused on the intensifying of South–South cooperation.Today’s deepened South–South multilateralism is partially built on the extensionor revival of traditional Southern alliances, such as the Non-Aligned Movement,the Group of 77 (G77) of the United Nation’s General Assembly or the Groupof 24 (G24). Probably because of its focus on matters of international finance, itis the latter which has been of greater significance over the other two olderalliances and has had bigger impact on current international relations. The G24draws its membership from the G77. It was established in 1971 and seeks torepresent the economic interest of developing states in institutions such as theInternational Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The grouping’s activismaround the reform of the two Bretton Woods institutions has increased in recentyears, with the alliance being more vocal about greater equity in the internationaleconomic system.

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More recently, however, new Southern blocs have emerged which to someextent overshadow older, traditional alliances in the vitality and momentumwith which they function. The founding of the Group of 20 developing states(or G20þ) in the World Trade Organisation is the most important in thisregard. Founded during the 2003 Cancun round of negotiations of the WorldTrade Organisation, and mostly focusing on the agricultural components ofthose negotiations, the G20þ presented an alternative agenda for WTO liberalisa-tion and came to play a significant role in the final breakdown of the WTO Dohanegotiations round in mid-2008. A few other new Southern configurations havealso gained early eminence. These include the IBSA trilateral forum, whicheven though it has been slower than expected in its progress, has developed amore coherent alliance identity in recent times. Regional alliances betweenAfrica and Asia have also strengthened with the founding of entities such as theNew Africa–Asia Strategic Partnership in 2005, and in particular, the Forumfor China–Africa Cooperation in 2000.

While perhaps stemming from a more conducive international environment, thezeal with which multilateralism is being pursued in the contemporary era does haveits costs. For Africa this has come in the manner by which overlapping membershipof several alliances has diluted, rather than strengthened incentives toward collec-tive (or harmonised) action on the continent. This also manifests in the bifurcationof states’ bilateral and multilateral policies. One example in this regard relates to theway in which South Africa has tended to pursue the fostering of closer bilateral tieswith identified key states. These have included over the years the establishment ofbi-national commissions with countries such as China, Cuba, Iran, Argentina andIndia, which, while focused on the strengthening of economic and technicalcooperation, also involve the attempt to align diplomatic stances on key issues ofthe day. Such bilateral interaction between South Africa and other Southern statesconstitutes a perhaps deeper layer of collaboration than would be possible—or desir-able—for the parties in their wider multilateral fora. In a similar vein some com-mentators (e.g. Mohan and Power, 2008) have remarked how the greatereconomic (and to some extent political) presence of the PRC in Africa and itscloser ties with states which are not necessarily ‘traditional’ continental leadershave brought about a change in interests for those states in the pursuit of bilateraland multilateral relations. An example may be provided of how China’s oil diplo-macy, although of varied nature in different parts of Africa, has been a factor ofinfluence in some of Africa’s more ‘difficult’ contexts, such as the Sudan. It hasbeen argued that that country’s economic relations with China have played a rolein its outward orientation to the continent and the rest of the world around issuesof conflict and human rights protection (e.g. Taylor, 2006).

In a broader sense, emergent South–South and North–South multilateral con-stellations of the various types described above present somewhat contradictoryimpulses with some significant implications for the smaller states of the South.They reflect the development of two tracks (or ‘speeds’) of economic and politicalmultilateralism which run parallel to each other but at different levels of intensityand with differing impact. In a word, it is the new North–South alliances which

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are of greater momentum and significance than the Southern-based counterparts.Emerging powers participate in both tracks as self-selected leaders of the South.The fact that they represent different agendas in each track, however, has led totension with other developing states. A good example is the friction whicharose in 2007 in the G24 around the invitation of the Outreach Five partners tothe Heiligendamm Summit and the G24’s dispute of the position adopted by thefive on the extent of the reform necessary in the current international financialarchitecture. The G24 was demanding more far-reaching reform to the BrettonWoods institutions than the G5 or the G20-Finance were willing to bargain for.South Africa’s foreign minister, Trevor Manuel, bore the brunt of the G24’s criti-cism for not adequately representing the needs of the developing world. Manuel’sretort was that the developing countries should ‘press for gains that are sustain-able, not transient; modest not meaningless’ (Manuel, 2007). This disputebetween South Africa and its partners in the G24 alliance is ongoing. It pointsto the difficulty which the countries which bear the status of emerging powerscan face in their attempts to balance the differing roles they play in North–South versus South–South multilateral fora.

South Africa has also been challenged as Southern leader from within theAfrican Union. One of the most important cases has related to the continentaldispute around the modalities of United Nations reform, and in particular howAfrica would be represented on enlarged Security Council. South Africa hasassumed one of the African seats for itself, but it was confronted on this in con-tinental negotiations in the build up to the UN Summit in 2005 where the issuewas debated. Compromise was eventually struck with the adoption of theAfrican Union (AU) Ezulwini Consensus in 2005, according to which Africashould strive to have two of the permanent and five of the non-permanent seatsreserved for the continent. The way in which South Africa’s naturally adoptedstance as leader of the African continent was challenged, however, has alertedthe country to the difficult diplomatic path that still lies ahead for it in establishingits prominence on the continent. The case also illustrates the intricacies whichemerging powers face in balancing their representation of the South with thepressures they face arising from their special alliance relationships with the North.

The difficulties in weighing out such dual identities are clearly evident in theoutcomes of the 2008 G8 Summit over which the G5 seemed to have exercisedlittle recourse. Suggesting a significant measure of disagreement between theNorthern and Southern partners, the G5 released their own statement at the endof the summit which laid greater stress on aspects concerning international finan-cial and food security and articulated a notably different standpoint on climatechange than did the statement released by the G8 (Group of Five, 2008).

In all, the variable speeds of multilateralism and the involvement of emergingpowers in a fast-tracked multilateral relationship with the North have presentedchallenges for those emerging powers. Africa’s representative in the North–South configurations, South Africa, has not had an easy time balancing thedemands—and internal contesting—as representative of the continent with itsown international ambitions and policy objectives.

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The international politics of securitisation

A third identifiable trend marks Africa’s engagement with the outside world in thetwenty-first century. It overlaps significantly with the two trends discussed above,but it also has its own dynamic. It relates to the way in which the politics on thecontinent have been shaped by strong shifts in the international peace and securityagenda over the past decade.

This stems in part from the significant changes in the discursive framework forinternational security, by which—certainly reflected in the discourse of Westerndonors, their agencies and bodies such as the United Nations—security hasbecome more closely connected to matters of development. The adoption ofvocabularies of ‘human security’, peace-building and complex security by inter-national institutions and attempts to infuse development projects with a more rig-orous human rights agenda have been an important contingent of the North’sreorientation toward the African continent, and of the leverage held by Africanleaders in their promotion of the ‘African agenda’. The various Africa-driveninitiatives and programmes discussed above therefore were aimed at givingflesh—and financial sustenance—to changed international ideals around develop-ment. This has also manifested in a more cohesive approach toward conflict res-olution on the continent, sanctified in a more driven, if not always successful,attempt by the African Union for collective engagement on the sources and sol-ution of African conflict (for a review see Adebajo, 2005; Bellamy and Williams,2005). In recent years, in the spirit of self-help and ownership proclaimed byNEPAD, Africa has also faced more pressure from the North to take greaterresponsibility in peacekeeping. Encouraged in part by the Chapter Eight pro-visions of the United Nations charter, the AU has therefore sought to be moreactively involved in the deployment and management of peacekeeping forceson the continent. This has occurred with varying measures of success. Forexample, UN-led deployments in the Democratic Republic of Congo andBurundi have seen a progressive increase in their African composition and haveoperated fairly solidly. The legitimacy of these operations has, however, beenundermined by allegations of corruption and abuse by African soldiers of hostpopulations, casting a pall on the practicability of peacekeeping initiatives thatare largely African-led. This has been worsened by the experience with thepeacekeeping force deployed in Darfur. Initially an operation of the UnitedNations, and in part a compromise to demands from the various conflictingparties in Sudan, the intention was to transfer responsibility for the force to theAfrican Union. A shortage of financing largely prevented this, which in 2007saw the re-establishment of a hybrid UN/AU force known as the AfricanUnion/United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID).

In subsequent years this force has been chronically affected by incapacities ofvarious types, most significant of which has been the inability of the AU andAfrican governments to provide adequate support. In more recent timesUNAMID has become frayed in battles in the Security Council between theUSA and UK, on the one hand, and China and other sympathetic states (such as

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South Africa) on the other, over not only the mandate of the force, but also ques-tions about how the conflict in Darfur should be resolved.

Indeed, the Darfur conflict has emerged as a key point of contention between theNorth and the South in fora such as the United Nations. In part this is because ofthe way in which the issue evokes North–South tension along a related plane of div-ision concerning international security, which stems from opposing viewpoints onthe purported threats of international terrorism and how (and by whom) this oughtto be dealt with. The polarisation that emerged in the international arena in thewake of the United State’s Global War on Terror has had some significant effectfor the way in which African states have aligned themselves with one or the othercamp. For one, the idea that some African regions could be potential sites for thecreation or harbouring of international terrorists has awoken an interest in the con-tinent by the United States. This has led to renewed importance for Africa in theforeign policy of the United States, which as with the planned US-sponsoredAfrican Command (or AfriCom), has certainly not always been of a sanguine nature.

The greater securitisation of international politics under the momentum of theWar on Terror has also had implications for the way in which emerging powershave engaged with the African continent. Depending on the content of theirown security agendas, strong states of the South may seek to create allianceswith African counterparts as a means of strengthening their own positions. Thealmost epic ideological confrontation between Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez andthe United States administration should be kept in mind as a factor in Venezuela’scourting of key African states—in particular South Africa—in recent years. Simi-larly, reinvigorated economic and political ties between African states and someold ideological mates such as Cuba also have to be read against backdrop of thedesire by those states to garner support for their own causes in the contemporaryera. In the case of Cuba this relates to the country’s frailer position in part fomen-ted by some serious challenges to its economic autonomy. Russia is an example ofan emergent power which, sitting uncomfortably in both Northern and Southerncamps, has had more incentive to accrue alliance partners from the South, includ-ing Africa, given the encroachment by the United States on its traditional sphere ofinfluence in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus (e.g. Shubin, 2005). The more com-bative ideological environment stimulated by the changed international stancetoward security, therefore has very real effects on the way in which internationalrelations are pursued. In all of this, attempts by the continent’s leaders to achievecertain objectives toward an improved international position for Africa occursagainst the backcloth of a more intense, sometimes antagonistic interplay betweenemerging and dominant powers on the continent.

Concluding remarks

Africa’s position in the international system has shifted in the twentieth centuryfrom the continent being fairly integral to the economic pursuits of imperialpowers, to, in the post-independence era, gaining an increasingly peripheralplacing in major powers’ purview. The continent’s steadily declining economic

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prospects and downward spiral into mismanagement and resurgent conflict meantthat it came to be regarded as a costly burden on the international community. Bythe end of the twentieth century most of the world’s major powers were keeping adisinterested distance from the troubling continent and its people. The develop-mental imperatives of Africa have nonetheless been important stimuli in thegrowth of an elaborate international development industry given shape by theexpanding architecture of world finance. In truth therefore, while being relativelymarginal as collective actor, the African continent has been quite a central objectin the evolving international relations of the twentieth century.

The rhetoric and actions of both African and other international leaders in thetwenty-first century would seem to suggest that the continent now has nowmore fully acquired subject status in the international system. To a great extentthis has been built on the rebalancing of international economic forces and theadded leverage afforded by ascendant alliances of the South led by the largestnew economies from the developing world. It has also been determined by achange in orientation by the North and a more receptive stance towards theAfrican-generated initiatives of transformation. Yet, for reasons outlined in thearticle, the extent to which Africa’s newfound self-awareness and assertiontoward a more cohesive and unified entity translates into the tangible repositioningfor the continent in the wider international sphere, is not clear. For one, the dee-pening of multilateral ties in the current international arena has had mixed resultsfor the African continent. The profusion of South-based multilateral bodies has infact weakened rather than bolstered Southern solidarity, as competing for rep-resentation in different planes of international engagement, the leading countriesof the South follow variable agendas. This does not seem to have resulted in anautonomous voice for the African continent.

With the exception of South Africa, African countries are not frequently listedamong the ranks of emerging powers. South Africa’s own status as emergingpower is also centred on the diplomatic and political eminence which it has builtup in the years following the end of apartheid, rather than any real weight that itcarries in an economic sense. Also, much of the drive toward African revival inthe twenty-first century has been built around a coterie of like-minded countriesand in the context of Africa, followed an arduous political process. It is unclearhow long the continental consensus that gave momentum to programmes suchas NEPAD will persist, or what the future is for the ambitious programmes ofchange embarked upon under the stewardship of African leaders who are todepart sooner or later. The early faltering in the implementation of NEPADacross much of the continent does not inspire faith in its longevity, and could bea factor in renewed Northern aloofness to the continent further down the line.

Of greatest significance for the African continent is the extent to which it is ableto harness opportunities linked to the emergence of new economic sites of influ-ence. Closer trade and investment ties with the PRC and India other large powersfrom Asia and Latin America can provide much-needed injections into stagnantAfrican economies. It is imperative, however, that African states ensure thattheir engagement with other Southern countries occurs on relations of equality.

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Note� Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Stellenbosch. Email: sc3@sun.ac.za

References

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Adebajo, A. (2005), ‘From Congo to Congo: United Nations Peacekeeping in Africa after the Cold War’, in: I.Taylor and P. Williams (eds), African in International Politics: External Involvement on the Continent,(London: Routledge), pp. 195–212.

Alden, C. and Vieira, M.A. (2005), ‘The New Diplomacy of the South: South Africa, Brazil, India and Trilater-alism’, Third World Quarterly, 26(4), pp. 1077–1095.

Antkiewicz, A. and Whalley, J. (2006), ‘BRICSAM and the Non-WTO’, Review of International Organizations,1(3), pp. 237–261.

Bellamy, A.J. and Williams, P. (2005), ‘Who’s Keeping the Peace: Regionalization and Contemporary PeaceOperations’, International Security, 29(4), pp. 157–195.

Brookings Institute (2008), ‘What Did the G8 Summit Achieve? Progress or Stalemate’, 10 July, http://www.brookings.edu/interviews/2008/0710-g8-linn.aspx

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